111 South Wacker
Chicago
Goettsch Partners

Trompe l’oeil tower plays with Chicago’s streetscape

© James Steinkamp

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Reminiscent of Hugh Stubbin’s Citicorp Center, Goettsch Partners’s 111 South Wacker boasts a trompe l’oeil ability to defy gravity. Although this office tower has an almost-square floor plate for most of its 53 stories, the ground floor lobby is an almost-circular shape with load-bearing columns placed not at the corners of the lot, but in the center of each side.

Goettsch Partners accomplished this engineering trick by transferring the load of the building’s upper stories, which is supported by columns spaced at 40-foot intervals, onto every other column, yielding an 80-foot interval between columns on the ground floor and allowing for a fully open plan. Visually, the architects expressed this load transfer with tightly spaced fins and mullions in the façade of the building’s first seven stories above the lobby.

At the ground floor level, indoors and outdoors merge through a clear façade comprised of cable-supported, water-white, non-reflective glass. Inside the lobby, the architects clad the concrete elevator core with a textured, white Carrara marble, offset by a solid back wall painted red Rossa Verona. The back wall conceals automobile ramps that lead to seven stories of parking above.

Thanks to a host of sustainable features, 111 South Wacker became the world’s first building to win LEED-CS (Core and Shell) Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Eco-friendly elements included a green roof, high-performance glazing, and high-efficiency chillers. Additionally, the entire building rests on existing caissons and foundations that the architects and engineers were able to reuse.

Formal name of Project:
111 South Wacker

Location:
Chicago

Gross square footage:
1,457,000 sq. ft.

Client:
The John Buck Company www.tjbc.com

Architect:
Goettsch Partners
224 South Michigan Avenue, Floor 17
Chicago, IL 60604
312-356-0600 tel.
312-356-0601 fax
www.gpchicago.com